Tesla stock hits new 52-week low, continues month-long decline

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss why Tesla stock continues to underperform.

影片文字轉錄稿

- Well, let's take a look at where Tesla shares are trading this morning. A slight pop there, a move in the stock's month-long decline as CEO Elon Musk deals with unhappy shareholders and at the same time navigates his path at Twitter. This unrest among Tesla shareholders comes as a new report released by KPMG shows that executives are taking a more cautious view around electric vehicle expectations in the coming years. It shows Tesla remaining the market leader in 2030 by a much narrower margin than previously expected.

And, Rachelle, it's worth pointing out that so much of the Tesla stock move to the downside has been put in the context of Twitter. And you could certainly argue that Musk, because of the cloud or because of his distraction with Twitter, has certainly led to some uneasiness, to say the least, among Tesla shareholders.

But there's a lot of other factors that are adding to this as well. One is the increased competition in the EV space. Tesla, obviously, at a much higher price point when you think about other EV cars that are coming on the market. And you see right there, I mean, they have been far away the leader in the space.

But you've got other cars that are coming online that are offering a cheaper alternative. And part of that is the concern whether, in fact, Tesla will be able to maintain its leadership or maintain the kind of leadership they've had over the last few years.

- I mean, when you think of where Tesla was, when you think of what was already out there when Tesla first came out, look how crowded the market now is in terms of who's there and, as you mentioned, at a more affordable price point. And we know that Musk cited some of these macroeconomic factors, saying, look, the Fed continuing to raise interest rates makes it harder for people to finance cars at a time when inflation is high. And so he's blaming some of those factors.

But a lot of people, when he initially bought Twitter, there were those initial concerns. Is it going to end up being a distraction? And, as we've seen, it was more than a distraction as he continued to sell some of his Tesla shares, potentially, we think, perhaps to help prop up Twitter.

But it's just one less thing that people needed when they want to really focus on what makes Tesla a great company the innovation and not being distracted by a lot of back and forth on Twitter. And so I think, obviously, a lot of shareholders were disappointed here. And they want some sort of clear path forward about what Musk is going to do next.

- Well, and to be fair, Twitter is a big cloud hanging over Tesla. We did finally get a response from Elon Musk there after that initial poll that asked whether, in fact, he should stay as CEO. The vote, of course, was in favor for him leaving his CEO.

Since then, he's tweeted, saying, "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job. After that, I will just run the software and servers team." Now, it's worth pointing out that line again, "just run the software and servers team." That's a big chunk of the business still for Twitter.

So if the concern among shareholders is about Elon Musk spending too much time with Twitter, I'm not sure him stepping down as CEO is necessarily going to alleviate some of those concerns when you think about how big that portfolio within Twitter still is. Of course, we don't have a timeline. He hasn't said when. He hasn't said who the CEO is. We don't have a succession plan. Still a lot of questions there. But I don't know if you were jittery about Tesla and its prospects seeing this tweet necessarily says, OK, fine, he's going to be all in on Tesla again.

- Yeah, it didn't really seem to move the needle because he left it wide open. You have to be foolish enough to take it. And, obviously, he has to sign off on this.

And we know that of some of the names that were bandied around when people put them on Twitter, he said no, I don't see it. So he's really left the door open. So I'm not sure how much hope Tesla investors should really have about when he's going to be stepping down. And he, clearly, hasn't laid out a timeline as well.